The Bugs We Can’t Live Without

Faith Appelquist | Tree Quality LLC

Most of us see insects as a buzzing, stinging nuisance to be slapped, sprayed or eradicated. But if you value life as we know it, you should fear for their survival. Despite insect’s 479-million-year track record, they are starting to struggle.

Data suggests that while we humans have doubled our population in the past 40 years, the number of insects has been reduced by almost half, according to a 2014 report in the journal Science. In Germany, the accumulated biomass of all insects trapped in more than sixty locations nationwide has plummeted by 75 percent in just thirty years. The National Academy of Sciences reports 10 to 60 times fewer insect numbers between 1976 and 2012. It’s easy to read that number as 60 percent less, but it’s sixty fold less. These losses are already rippling through the ecosystem, with serious declines in the number of lizards, birds and frogs.

Ninety percent of all plant production is left lying on the ground. The patient chomping of insects on rotten remains not only clears the ground of dead plants and animals, it returns nutrients to the soil. Without it, new life could not grow.

Faith Appelquist

Insect populations are falling for a number of interconnected reasons. Most important is our ever-more-intensive use of land for agriculture and development, which leaves fewer intact habitats, from rain forests to flower meadows. On top of that, climate change, pollution and pesticides, as well as the movement of species to non-native environments around the world, have had a destructive cascading effect on local ecosystems and their insects. Even increased use of artificial light has an impact on some species.

At what cost? Bugs are vital to the decomposition that keeps nutrients cycling, soil healthy, plants growing and ecosystems running. This role is mostly invisible, until suddenly it’s not. Like janitors in offices or apartment buildings, they do a lot to clean out the trash. It might not be a glamorous job, but the processes of decomposition and decay are critical to life on earth.

Pollination involves not just bees, but 20,000 different species of flies, ants, beetles, and other insects.

Faith Appelquist

The most compelling reason to care about insects is self-interest. Insects sit at the base of the food chain, fodder for innumerable other critters. They also pollinate three-quarters of our food crops. One survey estimated that insects contribute nearly $577 billion to the world economy through agricultural activity.

Although they resemble insects, millipedes are arthropods. Insects have six legs, four wings and two antennae.

Faith Appelquist

To stabilize insect populations, we need to find ways to take care of their habitats, whether in rain forests or cities and suburbs. Many species cannot survive in a transformed modern landscape. We can achieve a great deal with belts of trees and bushes alongside streams in residential areas; green shoulders and hedges along roads; and borders of wildflower meadows along the edges of fields. In forests, we need to keep old, dead trees to house their requisite share of insect ecosystems.

North America’s overall bird population has dropped 29% since 1970, with about 3 billion fewer birds now than nearly 50 years ago.

Faith Appelquist

We humans have long taken the free services of insects for granted. Taking care of them is a form of life insurance for our children and grandchildren. If human beings want a place here, we’d best make nice with our six-legged friends.

➽ FAITH APPELQUIST is an ISA Board Certified Master Arborist, anISA Municipal Specialist MN, and an ASCA Registered ConsultingArborist®. Faith can be reached at faith@treequality.com.